


The Quell

by sweetestsuffering



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-14 21:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18485179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsuffering/pseuds/sweetestsuffering
Summary: When Pell volunteered for the 24th Hunger Games, she thought she had six months to live. But even though her illness was a death sentence in District 12, Capitol doctors deemed it easily treatable. With a newfound will to live and little else, she braved the Arena, did terrible things, and survived.But she hadn't been planning on surviving, and there's nobody waiting for her when she returns to her home District. Her only companion in the Victor's Village is her hired caretaker, Angely—the girl whose life she saved by volunteering. Even though she'd rather be alone, she can't seem to shake Angely's loyalty, no matter how terribly she treats her.After spending a year out of the public eye in convalescence, Pell can't avoid her Capitol debut any longer. Her first year mentoring will be a special one for the Games: The Quarter Quell. And as she navigates the murky waters of Capitoline society and the thorny politics of mentoring, Pell quickly comes to depend not only on Angely's shrewdness—but on the girl herself.





	1. May 20 XX96

Pell is flushed, feverous, and can’t stop vomiting, but the only thing she can think about is the numbers.

It’s year 25. Quarter of a century. A big occasion.

Her knuckles pale as she grips the edges of the toilet bowl tighter. It’s made of porcelain. With a metal flush lever. Hooked up to real plumbing. The nice kind of toilet. The nicest fucking toilet in all of District 12, she’d bet. And it’s hers now.

She throws up again.

Angely is wedged between her and the bathtub, holding her dark hair out of her face and rubbing gentle circles against her back. Physical comfort does nothing to soothe the violent nausea, and honestly Pell wishes she wasn’t here. 

Angely’s seen the worst of her. She’s seen her in all her undignified moments. Pell should have no humility left, but there’s still part of her that’s childishly embarrassed when things like this happen.

She knows Angely doesn’t care. The girl has a strong stomach for a market kid, and she’s undeniably good-hearted. She’s never said a single thing to Pell to make her think that she thinks any less of her, for these moments. Still she wishes she was alone.

“It’s the medicine,” Pell manages to rasp out between dry heaves. 

“Mhmm,” Angely agrees, just a little affirmative hum. Bless her for playing along, but it’s not the medicine.

The Quarter Quell.

“What’s…” Pell begins, sitting back against the wall instead of leaning directly over the toilet. Angely stands and steps over her, first flushing the toilet and then handing her a glass of water from the counter. “Uhm, what’s… twenty-three times twenty-four?”

“I don’t know, off the top of my head,” Angely says, wetting a washcloth under the tap. She kneels next to Pell, mopping the sweat off her damp brow. It’s cool and soft and Pell closes her eyes, tries not to throw up again.

“It’s gotta be, like…” She can’t do the math in her head. It wasn’t ever her strong suit. “Hundreds? Thousands?”

“Just hundreds,” Angely assures her. They’re silent for a second. “Five hundred fifty two,” Angely says eventually.

Five hundred fifty two kids. Gone. And that was just the first 24 years.

“I want to be dead,” Pell says.

Angely clucks her tongue disapprovingly as she runs the washcloth up Pell’s neck, lifting her hair to get the nape. “No you don’t,” she says. And, god, what does she know? She wasn’t in the Arena. She doesn’t know anything, except what Pell looks like laying in her own sick and sweat. Why is she still here? Why won’t she leave her alone?

“Fuck off, Ingram,” Pell spits.

Angely stands, dropping the washcloth in the sink. “Don’t be mean,” she says.

“Fuck off,” Pell says again, dangerously close to tears. She’s going to cry in front of her, too, as if everything else wasn’t bad enough.

“Come on,” Angely says, tugging her to her feet by her shirt. “Take your clothes off. Get in the bathtub.”

Pell swats her away when she tries to take her shirt off. That’s the line. She’s not going to let Angely undress and bathe her like she’s a goddamned toddler.

There’s a little scuffle, but in the end she does get her privacy, more or less. Angely sits on the floor just outside the bathroom. The door’s open, but she can’t see in. She makes Pell talk to her the entire time, just to be sure she hasn’t drowned herself.

“Who do you think they’ll pick?” Angely asks at one point. Pell almost vomits again. The stupid Quell. The stupid tribute election that they’re all going to have to vote in.

“I don’t know,” Pell says. It’s all academic to Angely, she supposes, since she’s too old now. If Pell hadn’t already gone last year, she’d be eligible. And plenty of people in the district hate her. Everyone adores Angely. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not that different than usual.”

“Sure it is,” Angely says, and Pell can just imagine the look on her pale face, the crease between her fair brows, her straining hazel eyes. “Being chosen to go by your friends is… it’s different than the Capitol choosing you.”

“End result’s the same,” Pell argues.

“Not if…” Angely starts to say, but bites her tongue before she finishes.

“No, go on,” Pell grumbles. Angely and her wealth of opinions. It’s always something with her.

“I mean, at the reaping, I was…” She lets out a little huff of air. “I was scared, and shocked, but I wasn’t angry. Or hurt. I didn’t feel betrayed. You don’t think those things would change someone’s odds?”

Pell is silent through this, and for several seconds afterwards. Finally she grabs the edges of the tub and pulls herself up. Her whole body hurts, but she just clenches her jaw. “Angely, I don’t want to sound like a bitch,” she says through grit teeth. “But you were a tribute for about ten seconds. Did it even hit you?”

Her only response is silence.

It’s only as Pell’s wrapping herself in a fluffy, capitol-imported towel that Angely speaks again.

“I forgot to tell you,” she says, and Pell hears her stand up. “Good news.”

“What?” Pell asks, trying not to sound incredulous.

“My paperwork went through,” she says. “I have special dispensation to accompany you to the Capitol, for the Games. As your caretaker.”

She doesn’t say anything else; she just retreats downstairs. Pell can hear her move to the kitchen, even in the large vacuous space that is her house in the Victor’s Village.

They’re alone out here, her and Angely. She didn’t have any family to move in with her, just her one hired caretaker and sometimes friend.

She doesn’t deserve any of it. She didn’t deserve to win. She didn’t deserve to be cured. She doesn’t deserve the nice house with the nice toilet. And she definitely doesn’t deserve Angely. She, maybe, deserves to have to go back to the Capitol and watch more kids die. Angely doesn’t, though.

She volunteered for that.

Pell volunteered for her once too, when they were little more than strangers. This, she thinks, is nothing more than payment in kind. 


	2. June 06 XX96

Angely wants the Capitolites out of her house.

The ten months since Pell’s victory have been blessedly quiet, her victory tour replaced with time for convalescence. They’d hardly heard a word from the Capitol before the Quell announcement, except for the occasional visit from Dr. Moone. Angely knows this isn’t the typical life of a Victor, and if she means to stay with Pell, her life will change too. But she’s been enjoying the solitude.

Now the Capitol is here like a creeping blight to make up for lost time. And as if Pell’s escort and stylist team weren’t intolerable enough, Angely also has to deal with their chef, who has posted up in her kitchen with his team of Avox to prepare dinner.

It’s driving her insane, but when she takes her lunch to the front room to eat, she finds no reprieve. Pell’s in there with her stylist team, and they’re dressing her up like a doll while prattling on about something inconsequential, cross-talking like a flock of twittering birds.

Twelve’s escort this year is a fresh-faced young woman named Hedone Ballymont with bright auburn hair that might be natural and mismatched chromatic eyes that certainly are not. She has the charisma of a yappy lapdog and the brains of one too. Angely hated her immediately.

She flitters around the house like a butterfly, working her way down a seemingly endless to-do list. “Pellagra Stemple,” she says experimentally for maybe the hundredth time since she’s arrived, like she’s trying to make it sound natural in her mouth.

“Just Pell,” Pell corrects, again.

“It’s not very glamorous,” Hedone says, sounding put-out.

“Sorry,” Pell deadpans.

“This is your Capitol debut,” Hedone says, picking up a silky purple dress and holding it up to her own chest like it isn’t bespoke for Pell’s scrawny frame. “You have to cut a figure. Everyone is _dying_ to know more about you. You’re so mysterious, missing your Victory Tour. There’s just no way you’ll ever live up to the expectations.”

“Maybe a taller heel?” the head stylist asks.

At this moment Pell somehow manages to snap the heel of her shoe while standing perfectly still. Angely wouldn’t be surprised if she did it out of spite – she sees how Pell struggles to keep a straight face as her stylists yelp and squawk in surprise.

“Just—take a break,” Hedone tells her, hand pressed to her chest like her heart might leap out of it. “We’ll figure something out. You’re… pretty _enough_.”

Angely’s fingers tighten into a white-knuckled fist around her fork. She imagines stabbing Hedone right through her unnaturally purple eye or cracking her skull open like a caramelized custard.

She never had these kinds of violent impulses before watching Pell on the Broadcast.

“What’re you thinking about?” Pell asks, flopping down on the sofa next to her and kicking off the other shoe.

“Crème brûlée,” she says. Pell’s face scrunches up in confusion or distaste.

“Burnt milk stuff, yeah?”

Angely unclenches her jaw for the first time since the Capitolites arrived. “Yeah.”

“Can you make it?”

“I’ve never even had it,” Angely admits. She doubts she has the technical skill, anyway. She does all the cooking in the house, but it’s not her strong suit.

“They’ll have it in the Capitol,” Pell says. “They have everything.”

Angely can't help her curiosity. That's always been morbid, even before Pell. “What is it like there?”

For a moment, Pell’s at a loss for words. That’s a rare thing for her to be. Even if she’s brusque, she’s honest, and she doesn’t get caught up in her head like Angely always seems to. After thinking on it a moment, a smile tugs at one corner of her mouth. Angely looks down at her bowl of spring greens.

“They all treated me like I was dying,” Pell says, voice a conspiratorial whisper. “‘Cause they knew I was sick. Everyone else was good as dead already and I was the one they were fussing over.”

This isn’t what Angely meant in asking and she isn’t sure what to make of it, so she takes another bite as Pell draws another shaking breath to speak again.

“It was like… being a hundred miles under the sea.” Pell is quiet, then.

Angely tries to imagine it, but falls short. The fish she knows are mud trout and walleye and maybe the catfish that live in the deep lakes. She’s never seen a tropical fish like the ones Capitolites keep in their tanks, or an octopus, or whatever else lives down on the ocean floor. It might as well be another planet.

She supposes that’s all Pell really means by it.

“But with dessert,” Angely says to break Pell’s trance.

“Yeah. You’ll get your burnt pudding,” Pell says as she stands to move to the kitchen herself.

It’s a promise that leaves a sour taste in Angely’s mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Updating Tuesdays & Thursdays.


End file.
